This weekend has been rainy, but a couple of weeks ago, we were all playing outside. Sadie really enjoys rolling on the big ball, even it ends up with her going head over teakettle.

Dear Internet,

We have a ton of baby stuff that it’s in really good shape. I don’t know what to do with it now that Lucy is outgrowing it.

Anyone have any suggestions for good ways to redistribute all the baby toys, clothes, monitors, swings, etc.?

Thanks!
Jason

Lucy has her first piece of Red Sox clothing, and she has the appropriate attitude to go with it.

She’s just praying that A-Rod messes with her.

Lucy requested that I post a more attractive picture of her, so I took her to my office upstairs where we can get a better webcam angle. Much nicer!

And yes, now that I work from home, I get incredibly dressed up each morning…

Lucy went in for her two-month checkup last week. She’s in the 95th percentile for height and in the 97th percentile for weight. She’s not quite sure what to make of the laptop, though.

If you haven’t seen it, you should check out what Alan Taylor has been doing on Boston.com. He’s put together a blog of some of the most compelling photos that have come over the wire.

It’s brilliant photography and an outstanding presentation. You should check it out.

Someone is very happy with my new working-from-home lifestyle.

I note with interest Susan Hunt Stevens’ new blog over at BoMoms: Practically Green. Susan is doing tons of things to really live green at her new home in Newton. She’s writing about what it’s like to live on the edge of these new technologies and mindsets.

She’s gone far further than we have, although we are trying to green as we go (Grawgo) — installing the compact fluorescents, upgrading the furnace, buying a reasonably fuel-efficient car.

I look forward to reading more about how she’s doing it.

Sadie had a lot of fun in Grandmama’s back yard on Saturday. Watch the video.

If the embedding doesn’t work, check out the original video on YouTube.

Whatcha gonna do when Lucy-mania runs wild on you?

Do you see this sleeper I’ve nearly outgrown? It’s labeled 3-6 months. I am seven weeks old. Obey me, or I shall unleash my butterfly hordes.

Lucy’s coming along well. She’s still not used to having Daddy continually snapping pictures of her, though.

Eventually, she gets used to it, and tries to humor me with a little smile.

Lucy heard a lot of Project Runway in the womb, and she is starting to become a bit more discerning about her fashion choices. She fell in love with this hat.

She’s learning how to play with her big sister. Mostly, she plays by sitting in the boppy and watching Sadie demonstrate the toys.

Mostly, Lucy eats. I have never seen a baby who eats this much. Here is she, politely telling me that she would like the bottle over there on the shelf. Now, please.

Bring me four ounces of milk every ten minutes until I pass out. Then every fifteen minutes.

Sadie had a lot of fun at Grandmama’s house this morning. She got to play out in the garden, saying hello to the frogs.

After lunch, we went inside. Sadie kicked the kitty out of the kitty condo. She had more important things to do with it.

We all hope to go back soon. All of us except the kitty, of course.

After three years, I’m moving on from Boston.com. My last day will be next Thursday. It’s been a great ride, and I think that we’re doing some really interesting things with the site, but it’s time for me to go back to the startup world.

I’m starting up a new project in June. It’s in stealth-mode right now — code for “I haven’t written it yet.” I should have something to unveil later this fall.

In the meantime, I hope to be able to write in this blog (and a new one I’m starting) for more often. My writing skills have atrophied so much that I can only write in bullet points now. It’s time to fix that.

Sadie likes her slide.

If you can’t play it from this page, click through to the original on YouTube.

With a two-year-old and a newborn, I knew that I’d need to invest in a swingset for the backyard. So, a couple of weeks ago, I went to Walpole Woodworkers and ordered one. It arrived early last week, and this is the first weekend Sadie’s been able to enjoy it. It’s safe to say that she is a fan.

When we run out of the backdoor and down the stairs from the deck, she always heads first to the swings. “Put me on the swing, Daddy.”

“Pull me high, Daddy.”

“Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee.”

Sadie gets some good height.

After hours of swinging, Sadie likes to cap it off with a quick run or two down the slide. She doesn’t go down headfirst like her cousin Peter, but she gets some pretty good velocity.

I have a feeling we’ll be spending a lot of time out in the backyard this summer (and likely for the next ten summers or so).

Lucy is five-weeks old, so she still doesn’t have the greatest of head control. She loves spending some time just chilling in the boppy.

She finds it very zen.

Lucy spends a lot of time with her mouth open. What happens when everyone does their Lucy impression for the webcam?

As you’d imagine, the last few weeks have been pretty busy. At some point, I’ll pull together a coherent set of pictures and video, but for now, here’s a quickly shot this morning of Lucy, Sadie and me. Thank goodness for the webcam on the kitchen laptop.

Your crying is very important to us. Due to unexpectedly high child-cry volume, we are unable to attend to you right now. To help us serve you better, please choose your desire from among the following options. Please listen closely, as the options have recently changed.

Press one for “Boob”
Press two for “Send the baby back to the hospital”
Press three for “No, seriously. Boob!”
Press four for “Alleviate generalized sibling angst”

For all other requests, please hold on the line and continue wailing.

Your crying is very important to us….

They asked the children at Sadie’s school what they want to be when they grow up. The other girls want to be mommies, or ladies or mermaids; my little girl wants to play football. Hell yeah.

Maybe she’ll be the next Adam Vinatieri. I think she’d rather be the next Junior Seau, though.

Lucy likes posing for the computer.

Turns out that, like Sheena, Lucy is a punk rocker.

Day three of the Butler foursome went very well. Sadie is becoming very protective of her little sister.

In one of the most anticipated meetings since Obi-Wan met Anakin, Sadie and Lucy were introduced today. They seem to like each other, so far. We’ll see how long that lasts.

Lucy Holcomb Butler
Born 4/2/2008
8 lbs, 11oz

Everyone is happy and healthy. And excited!

No more sippy cups at meals!

So far, we’ve only had a couple of spills. I’m glad we have lots of rags in the kitchen.

Have you signed away your right to sue?
Yet another article about how mandatory-arbitration clauses are bad, this time in employment law.

Be it ever so illogical — drop the price of your home, already
We’re not looking to sell our house for a couple of years, at least. I hope that when we do, we’ll be able to accept reality, and price our house to the market.

Do open houses sell houses?
Shill! I really like our Real Estate blog. This entry is on open houses. It’s fun to watch people fighting in the comments.

Should it be free?
Outstanding article on whether software should be free or not. Even if you’re not in the industry, you should read this.

Jason Butler - Twitter
Because it’s important that I have an outlet for 140-character updates on my life through the day. Follow at your own risk.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to post about Sadie. We’ve had tons going on, but I want to take a quick break to tell you all how she’s doing.

Sadie is incredibly active, running around the house until she’s nothing more than a blur.

She loves sitting in the living room, where the sun comes in and make her hair all glowy. She likes that.

She loves coloring at her table. She’s graduated from sheets of paper to coloring books. Art school, here we come!

We spent some time yesterday coloring Easter eggs. We have to start with a nice snack first, though. Everyone likes the milk.

We started out with the hard-boiled eggs. You need to drop some vinegar into the cups. Be careful!

While you’re waiting for the eggs to color, it’s fun to play with the basket.

Easter morning: It’s time to search for the eggs. Found one!

So much fun. Sadie ended up with a full basket of eggs. She didn’t like the jellybeans, though.

Baby should be coming in the next ten days or so, so I suspect there’ll be lots more pictures coming soon.

All hail Universal Hub
Excellent article in the Phoenix about Adam Gaffin and Universal Hub. I’m not stealing all our hyperlocal community ideas from him, but maybe a couple…

12 practical steps for learning to go with the flow
February was a trying month. March has not started much better. I need to learn to go with the flow a little bit more.

Beat the long tail with 1,000 true fans
Incredibly interesting article about how to survive as a creator without having to rely on the blockbuster. Must read.

Bank Julius Baer: allegedly money-laundering; unquestionably moronic
Robert X. Cringely expains why attempting to shut down the whistleblower site is the stupidest thing an (allegedly) money-laundering bank would want to do.

Why it’s good to include the tourist hordes in your travel photos
Philip Greenspun shows why including your fellow travelers in your shots can sometimes make them far more interesting.

This week’s TWIT was their best
This week’s episode of “This Week in Tech” was their best. Jason Calacanis and Molly Wood add a ton to the panel, and I hope they become regulars.

Wow, I’m way behind on my website postings; impending baby and multiple launches at work are conspiring against me.

Today we did our “stock up on everything you can think of” run to BJs. Now, both freezers are full, and we should be able to live for a couple of weeks without leaving the house when the baby arrives. I’m wracking my brain for other baby-prep tasks I need to do.

Anyway, on to the links…

AngryJournalist.com
Anonymous journalists tell us what they’re angry about today. Quite a bit of inside baseball, but not too different from what I see from time to time in the newsroom.

This is also a good example of what happens to the signal:noise ratio when the social-news hordes descend on a site.

Yet another reason to boycott Best Buy
I have never had a good experience at Best Buy (or their not-at-all-missed competitor Comp USA). They take advantage of the non-technical customers and outright lie when they are caught. I hope that a more activist Congress will reign in some of the corporate excesses.

50 tricks to get you more productive
It’s always good to remind yourself of little ways to keep moving the chains. I’m pretty good about most of these, but I really need to work on a couple of them — especially working on the important things, instead of just the pressing things.

Learn to demo
Good advice from Antonio Rodriguez on how to prep yourself for demoing your product.

We told Sadie this morning that I was going to take her to the high school tonight to vote for president.

She said, “Vote Duck.”

Perhaps we’ve read this book a few too many times:

Sadie, Sadie, jumping all around. Jumping up and down from the bottom of the stairs is one of Sadie’s most favorite games. We spent eleven minutes this morning climbing up and jumping down. Great fun!

Not safe for work: so, what happens when Google’s parents go away for the weekend? That Snopes girl is such a buzzkill.

It probably won’t mean much if you’re not a web geek, but it’s pretty funny if you are.

I’ve really joined the cult of the ice melt this year. I laid out forty pounds on the driveway last night, and this morning went far more smoothly for the effort. My latest bout of shoveling was only 45 minutes, as opposed to the 90 minutes I expected.

We haven’t been able to come up with a name for the impending baby yet; I’m going to nominate Calcium Chloride Butler.

Shill Alert!

This is pretty neat: the Globe’s Wesley Morris and Ty Burr sit and talk about the movies they review in the paper. It’s Ebert and Roeper with a Boston mindset. Plus, they get to go off on the movies they don’t like, as in the case of “The Bucket List.”

Edit: killed the embed for technical reasons…

Also, in case you ever wondered what the Globe’s auditorium looked like, you can see it here. Now, imagine yourself in a two-hour business-review meeting there…

It’s been a while since I’ve put up any new Sadie pictures. Sorry about that. One of the new year’s resolutions is to take new pictures of her (and impending baby) at least once every three days. I hope this discipline will let me keep more up-to-date with her changes. In the meantime, here’s some new pictures to keep everyone happy.

Sadie is looking pretty small outside in the yard.

Sadie is getting really good at feeding herself and taking control of her milk intake. She knows that if she asks nicely, she’ll always get some more milk.

The week before Christmas, we got together and decorated a gingerbread house. Sadie liked putting on all the candy.

Sadie had a very nice Christmas. One of the highlights was her very own tricycle. She doesn’t quite reach the pedals yet, but we’re all looking forward to summer, when she can ride free.

One of her other favorite toys from Christmas is the ever-popular Play-Doh. Spending an hour with the Play-Doh is one of our new Saturday-morning traditions.

That’s all for now. More pictures in a few days!

You finish wrapping the present with her, then when you turn around, she gleefully rips open the paper.

She’s not quite getting the concept yet.

The coach on how to make proper peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Ahh, YouTube.

I was reading the Fort Point article this morning when I read this nugget:

Archon/Goldman, the former owners of 316 and 322 Summer St., had initially envisioned converting the two properties into luxury condominiums, launching [Fort Point’s] transformation into a community where people live, work, and play - a local version of the Soho and South Beach neighborhoods in New York and Florida[.]

I’ve been coming into my Fort Point offices for the past two and a half years, and I can guarantee you this: Fort Point Channel is NOTHING like South Beach. Trust me.

Bill Keller’s speech
New York Times editor Bill Keller gives an incredibly insightful speech, talking about the future of journalism and newspapers.

Ten steps to close down an open society
A scary checklist — one we’ve almost completed.

Does your customer service just want people to go away?
Seth Godin has a smart idea here: measure your customer service people by the amount the customers buys after the call as opposed to before it.

Talent Wars in Boston
Xconomy does a nice write up of the current state of the technology labor market in Boston. It’s a good time to be a techie on the Red Line.

How to be a consultant
Long, insightful article. I faced many of these same issues back when I was consulting.

Top 10 reasons we deleted your comment
The Times’ City Room blog describes how they handle blog comments. Seems quite reasonable, though some in the comments disagree.

The treadmill desk
Shimon Rura has a great article talking about how he set up a treadmill desk. I read my NetNewsWire on the treadmill in the morning, but I’ve never looked at trying to type. I’ll have to see if I can improvise something around this.

Having an iPhone doesn’t qualify you to fly the plane
“Some guy with an IPhone says the weather is good, and wants to know what the real reason is for the delay. Is something wrong with the plane?”

Accident victims face grab for legal winnings
If you are hurt in an accident, you might not be able to get any relief by suing the responsible party. If you win, the insurance company may swoop in and claim the judgment you receive. I can see both sides of this argument, but it still sounds all sorts of wrong.

Misgivings rise with Antarctican tourism
I regret not having been able to see Antarctica while still single and able to travel. In light of the rise in tourism and last week’s sinking of a cruise liner, I worry that it won’t be feasible when we’re ready to travel again.

Rise in holiday call strains mall cops
Nothing heats up the old police blotter quite like the holidays. It must be great fun to break up fights at the mall.

Renting ideas to Fortune 500 companies
Really interesting post from Tim Ferriss about how you can license your ideas to large companies and collect royalties. Beats working, but you have to actually go out and think of useful stuff.

Travel Basics: Moscow
I was trawling our sister site at the International Herald Tribune when I came across their travel blogs, written by the correspondents stationed in each city. The Travel Basics are great primers, not that I’m going to Moscow, or back to Bangkok any time soon.

Fresh pain for the uninsured
Important article from Business Week. Hospitals are outsourcing their collections from the uninsured.

3BR with a mall view
This article about the new condos at the Natick Mall annoyed me in many different ways. This is my favorite quote: “Their $1.6 million, 2,200-square-foot penthouse overlooking JCPenney, the DuGallys said, suits the lifestyle they want for themselves and their Chihuahua, Jasmine.” I always wanted a view of the JCPenney.

The Predatory Lending Association
Outstanding parody site. Ha ha, only serious.

An interview with the author of Programming Collective Intelligence
A highly-readable discussion of a highly-useful book.

“Sadie, stop it. Cream cheese is not a hand lotion.”

China’s deadly pollution
The Times has a long investigative piece this morning on China’s growth policies’ impact on the environment, and the growing blowback. The air was ugly when I was there in 2001; I can only imagine how bad it is now.

Walking scores
This is a neat site that calculates the walkability of any location. My long-time Cambridge apartment gets a 100 out of 100 score; everything you need is within walking distance. My current address only gets a 5. Damn suburbs.

The nerd handbook
s/nerd/geek/g, but otherwise pretty close in a lot of ways.

Rebuilding Hollywood in Silicon Valley’s image
Marc Andreessen on how the talent can overthrow the studio system.

Ok, so the Patriots rolled up 56 points on the Bills last night. Amazing.

And we don’t even hate the Bills. How many points will we score on Shula’s “Asterisk” Dolphins? On the “You cheated, so you didn’t really beat us all those times” Steelers? On the Jets? Can the scoreboards roll triple digits?

Grammie and Grampie gave Sadie an easel for her birthday last week. She’s been coloring like a fiend ever since.

She loves having her own whiteboard. Now, when she wants to know more about a subject, we go to the board for a deep dive. Here, we’re dissecting and analyzing her Sunday breakfast: biscuits go in the oven, eggs in the frying pan and bacon in the microwave.

She really feels like she groks it now.

We’re so proud.

So, we were waiting in the room at Holliston Pediatrics this afternoon, and I’m showing Sadie pictures of herself on the phone. In under 15 seconds, she saw how I was doing the flick to advance the photos and she started doing it herself.

Egads. I’m not sure I want her anywhere near my computers; she’ll probably optimize them when I’m not looking and I won’t be able to find anything again.

Sadie is two years old.

She’s a real little girl now, with very little of toddlerhood still around. She’s talking all the time. She takes care of her things. She understands when we’re talking to her. She even has her own whiteboard now.

She’s starting to learn some useful life lessons. Here, she’s playing with one of her balloons. Soon, she would see what happens when she decides to roll her whole body onto the balloon. Sorry, but we obey the laws of physics in this household, missy.

Even if the balloons don’t always bring joy, Sadie still gets the high of wearing a crown. She would like every day to be crown day from now on.

What’s a celebraton without cake? On Sunday morning, she helped prepare the birthday cupcakes. She knows that one starts with the muffin cups.

You can’t make a cupcake without breaking eggs, so Sadie helped Mommy incorporate the eggs into the batter.

When it’s all done, you get to blow out the candles. And this year, no unfortunate cupcake incidents!

Happy birthday!

Over the past couple of weeks, I rewrote my gallery-building engine in Ruby, making it much more flexible and easy to use. So now, I may actually be able to put up some of the old galleries I did, but never published, like this one of a Red Sox vs. Yankees game from 2004.

Here are the pictures:

1. Budweiser sign
2. Couple at Fenway
3. Baby at Fenway
4. Fenway math
5. Curt Schilling
6. Jason Varitek
7. Jason Varitek warming up
8. Jason Varitek being all pensive
9. Johnny Damon throwing
10. Johnny Damon warming up
11. Manny Ramirez warming up
12. David Ortiz
13. Curt Schilling faces Derek Jeter
14. Curt Schilling brushes back Derek Jeter
15. Watering the infield at Fenway
16. Yankees fan gets booted from Fenway
17. Another Yankees fan gets booted from Fenway
18. Schilling leaves
19. Keith Foulke saves the day

I now know with complete certainty that we will be having either a boy or a girl.

We had a scheduled ultrasound yesterday, during which we were hoping to be able to find out whether the baby would be a boy or a girl. Unfortunately, the little baby wouldn’t cooperate, demurely crossing its legs. We’re going to have to wait until the big day itself to find out.

If it’s a boy, I hope he likes pink, because that’s what we got.